


Left Behind

by cleverusernameloading, enjolrolo



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Rescue Missions, mostly angst, what's better than this? Guys bein dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleverusernameloading/pseuds/cleverusernameloading, https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolrolo/pseuds/enjolrolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn is slow-moving. The pilots pass him, leaping aboard the ships. The stormtroopers are getting close enough for their blaster fire to reach him, and he dodges. His “dodge” consists more of him falling headfirst into a cluster of bushes and not being able to get back up as his teammates dash past, but, semantics. </p>
<p>He pulls himself up just far enough to watch the ships start up and lift off the surface, and he comprehends one final thought before he blacks out:</p>
<p>
  <i>They abandoned me.</i>
</p>
<p>///</p>
<p>The Resistance has made a few mistakes in its time, though this is one of the bigger ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

Finn’s first mission with the Resistance goes fine. It’s a quick run to a neighboring system, with a small team, to stop a group of Stormtroopers from invading the only colony in the system that can harvest pure water. He’s been paired up to fly over with Poe, who cracks jokes the whole flight there and takes focus away from Finn, who is desperately trying not to show how nervous he is. 

The mission, however, is successful, and Finn finds himself at dinner that night in the midst of a group of pilots, talking excitedly about one thing, gossiping about another. Finn knows most of them by now, and it’s incredible, the amount of noise and cheer and friendship that Finn can now feel all at once. To his left, Jessika Pava is shouting curses at Snap, who’s across the hall and has apparently inconvenienced her in some way. Poe is on Finn’s right, a solid and friendly presence.

He doesn’t want to get up, ever. The atmosphere is everything Finn could have ever wanted.

Poe elbows him an hour or so later, and Finn startles, suddenly aware that he’d been falling asleep at the table. “You should head to bed. Do you have a room?”

Finn thinks of the room he’s been allowed to have to himself. The General had called it an empty storage closet, but it was all Finn’s, where he could keep his own belongings and sleep without the company of others. Nodding emphatically, he stands up. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“Goodnight.” Poe shoots him a kind smile, and then he’s turned back to Karé, who’s drunkenly recounting an exaggerated story about her first mission.

 

Finn drifts around the base for a few days, hiding in the library, attending physical therapy, seeing Poe when he can but not interfering with Poe having a life of his own. He knows that Poe doesn’t want him hanging around all the time, so he takes up odd jobs, reads every book he can get his hands on, and stays holed up in his room when he can.

The next call for everyone to assemble comes in early afternoon, right when Finn has finished in the greenhouses.

He hears the instructions through a sort of haze, but understands the basic idea: there are troopers capturing an outpost, and Finn is required to go fight them off. 

“All hands on deck,” Organa says firmly, and Finn sags against the wall. Of course it is, several pilots, including Poe and Jessika, are out on another call as they speak. He’s managed to avoid combat missions until now on the excuse that he isn’t sure how his re-exposure to combat against his former Order will go, but that excuse is getting more flimsy as time goes on.

It’s a blur of finding the hangar and getting up into a ship with some of the others, but Finn soon finds himself marching out of the ship near the outpost, blaster in hand. 

Finn seems to only get the task of keeping guard of the ships because he’s useless when it comes to the team maneuvers he’s only just begun to learn, but he isn’t complaining. Real combat seems like too much right now.

The forest is quiet around him, the sounds of strange wildlife surrounding him, and then he hears a shout of command and blaster fire erupts to his left, not far from where he’s standing. Finn readies his blaster, presses his side into a tree that could act as a shield if necessary. He stares at the dense foliage for any sign of the fight nearing him, and he’s ready when stormtroopers burst through the wall of green.

A shot passes centimeters from his ear, and then, before he can take down more than a few troops, a shot has slammed into his right shoulder, and he’s sent staggering back into his shielded spot behind the tree. His first legitimate combat mission as a Rebel, and he’s already out of commission.

Finn locks his knees so that he doesn’t keel over from pain. Getting hit with a blaster isn’t fun, and Finn’s shoulder feels like it had been amputated with a plastic fork. He fires twice more, and by then the other people helping cover the ships have come to help him, driving the troopers back. Before they can fully succeed, Finn feels another two shots hit him in the gut, and he doubles over, eventually falling to the ground and smacking his head rather hard.

The people who’d been watching the ships continue past him, finishing off the stormtroopers, but Finn hears the battle noises recede into the distance. Both he and the ships are vulnerable.

It’s a haze of blasters firing and the grass that’s in Finn’s mouth until a thought hits him. He’s going to be left behind. When he’d gotten hit by Kylo Ren, he’d been brought back to the medbay, but only because Rey had fought to get him medical care.  

Finn doesn’t want to get left behind, but he doesn’t have much of a say in the matter. Stormtroopers who are injured are abandoned, useless to the cause, and won’t the Resistance only give medical care to those who they deem important to survive? Finn’s thoughts crowd in his head, giving him a headache. A single instinct keeps pestering him: to get aboard one of the ships, hide in the back, do anything to get back to base. 

It seems to require a whole lot of strength to pull himself up to hands and knees, and his vision is blurring with pain. The last time he’d been injured in combat, he’d just passed out, but he can’t do that now.

A harsh kick to his injured shoulder sends him back to the ground, groaning. When he looks up, it’s into the barrel of a blaster, which is being held by a stormtrooper, presumably the one that had kicked Finn. 

“Secure this area,” the stormtrooper barks to the others behind them, and then blaster fire erupts, making them stumble. Finn forces himself to his feet, by some sort of miracle, fires his blaster at the stormtrooper who had originally been trying to shoot him, and then turns back to see the commotion.

The Resistance members are tearing through the trees, fleeing from a literal sea of stormtroopers. They’re shouting words that Finn can hardly make out, but when they get closer, he starts to understand. They’re yelling at the two pilots who were guarding the ships with Finn, the two pilots who are currently ahead of the group, clearly on their way to start up the ships and prepare to take off.

Finn is slow-moving. The pilots pass him, leaping aboard the ships. The stormtroopers are getting close enough for their blaster fire to reach him, and he dodges. His “dodge” consists more of him falling headfirst into a cluster of bushes and not being able to get back up as his teammates dash past, but, semantics. 

He pulls himself up just far enough to watch the ships start up and lift off the surface, and he comprehends one final thought before he blacks out:

_ They abandoned me. _

 

It’s a fairly typical landing, but morale is low and Karé can feel the somber mood. It will take a few days for them to fully bounce back from this failure. At least they’d all gotten out alive; she hadn’t seen anyone fall, except for herself when she’d tripped over a root. That had been embarrassing.

No one had seen, though. So she was okay. 

The door to the hangar bursts open, and it’s Dameron, his droid trailing behind him and whistling nonstop. Dameron has a habit of coming out to greet the homecomings, because he’s ridiculously kind and seems to forget that he’s no longer Karé’s commanding officer.

He isn’t smiling this time, and he doesn’t have a reason to. The situation is worse than they thought. “Is everyone okay?” he asks, and as soon as Captain Arana nods to him, Dameron demands, “Where’s Finn?”

Karé turns in a circle, searching the small group of Rebels for the kid. It  _ is  _ peculiar that Finn hasn’t rushed into Dameron’s arms already. The two of them are practically inseparable.

When no one offers an answer, Dameron gets even more agitated. BB-8’s head unit tilts to the left, bleeping worriedly. “Where is he? Did nobody do a headcount when you got back on board?”

“It was a big rush, we didn’t have time to call roll,” Arana snaps, like he too is realizing that something is wrong. He storms back onto the ship he’d flown, but he isn’t angry at anyone in his squadron, he’s most likely angry with himself with letting them leave Finn behind.

Karé swallows, trying to ignore Dameron’s expression of panic by taking off her helmet. There’s no gentle way to say it that doesn’t sound sarcastic. “We must have accidentally left him behind…”

Dameron’s probably figured this out by himself already, but watching the acceptance dawn on his face is awful, and Karé grimaces. “I’m sorry, Dameron--”

With an heartbroken look on his face, Dameron shakes his head, effectively silencing Karé. She can see that his hands are shaking as he pushes one of them through his hair. “Don’t. He’ll be fine.”

Karé doesn’t point out that if Finn had been unable to return to a ship, he’s much less than fine. They can all feel it.

 

Finn wakes slowly, and there's a brief, blessed second that he has no idea where he is or what happened.

Then the pain--both from three blaster shots and getting left behind--hits him. Hard.

_ They left. _

_ They left me. _

Finn rolls onto his side slowly, wincing at the pain from his...well, pretty much everywhere, and gazes at the leaves in front of him. He can't really blame them. He was too injured to make it to the ship, and, therefore, too injured to waste medical resources on. Apparently the Resistance isn't as different from the First Order as Finn had thought.

He tries to roll onto his back, but something stops him.

It takes him a second. Right. His pack. Everyone had been given one, but Finn hadn't gotten a chance to look in it. He tries to remember what Captain Arana had said--weapons? Survival equipment? Both? Hopefully. Regardless, if Finn wants to get at it, he's going to have to sit up.

Sitting up seems as daunting a task as taking down a Star Destroyer from a landspeeder at the moment, but Finn takes two deep breaths and (somehow) manages to not pass out from the pain in his abdominal muscles as he pulls himself upright. He can't help but let a cry of pain escape his lips, and he immediately freezes, waiting for a sound that would signal a stormtrooper coming to investigate.

The forest is completely silent, even the wildlife making no noise.  _ The fighting must have scared them off _ , he thinks, then shakes his head and decides to concentrate on the somewhat more important matter of his survival.

Finn does an awkward scoot to the nearest tree, sheds the pack, and leans against the trunk. After giving himself a moment to rest and the dizziness to fade, he pulls the pack towards him and opens it.

A week's worth of dried food--with some rationing, he can turn that into two--two power packs for his blaster, two water bottles (which, luckily, feel full), a small medpac with bandages and painkillers among other things, camouflage netting, a medium-sized knife, and--Finn’s hopes grow when he sees--a transmitter of some kind.

He pulls it out and immediately wishes he hadn’t gotten his hopes up. There's a small but smoldering hole right through the middle of it--obviously hit by a blaster bolt sometime during the skirmish. He flicks a couple of switches, but, aside from some sparking at the ends of the singed wires, all he gets is a small red light that blinks out almost right away.

Finn leans his head against the tree. Well, even if the transmitter were intact, it probably wouldn't have the range to reach anyone useful. (And, despite the fact that he's trying to avoid thinking it, the Resistance probably wouldn't come back for him anyway. They obviously had no problem leaving him.)

Finn sighs and looks at the bottle of painkillers. It says to take one. He takes two. 

When the agony in his torso subsides enough for him to trust his hands, he pulls the bandages and a bottle labeled  _ antiseptic _ from the medpac (there's a needle and thread in there too, but there's no way he'll be able to use those.) His right hand is near-useless, but it can at least hold things with some reliability. 

Taking his shirt off completely is out of the question with his right arm being as uncooperative as it is, so he pulls up the bottom to take care of the two shots to his abdomen (Finn is no medic, but he's pretty sure he's not supposed to see what he does) and uses the knife to cut enough fabric away from his shoulder with a mostly-steady hand (he only cuts himself once, when a throb of pain from his wounds makes his left hand jump) so he can bandage that one too. There's probably more that he's supposed to do about the injuries, but the little medical training he's received isn't coming readily to his memory at the moment. 

Finn drinks some of the water, pulls his jacket securely around him, and settles against the trunk as comfortably as he can to sleep.

As he falls asleep, he wonders if Poe had even noticed that he was missing.

 

Poe allows himself three minutes exactly to duck into a storage closet and freak out. It seems more like three seconds, but it allows him to compartmentalize his emotions and focus on the problem at hand. Finn has been left behind, possibly injured, on a planet overrun by the First Order.

Poe walks--definitely doesn’t sprint while forcing down tears--to Organa’s quarters, knocks on the door twice, then lets himself in. The General is watching some security holograms, but she switches them off when she sees Poe enter. 

She can tell something’s wrong, maybe she’d sensed it before Poe burst in with tears still staining his face, but she just points to a chair. 

Poe sinks into the chair and hiccups. “The mission today--they had to retreat, the outpost is gone--they left Finn back there! I have to go get him.”

“Finn’s still on the planet?” Organa asks, concern growing in her voice. 

“He’s probably hurt, we can’t let the Order capture him!” 

The General visibly hesitates before answering, which means that the answer isn’t going to be one that Poe likes. “I can’t let my best pilot go back there. If the planet is really taken by the Order, you run a serious risk of getting taken as well. I can’t authorize it.”

“We’re just going to abandon him?” 

“I can’t  _ authorize it, _ ” the General says, and regards Poe with a carefully blank expression. “It would be a dangerous mission, even though he does have a transmitter device that is sending his location to our system every ten minutes.”

Poe relaxes a small amount, nods shortly, and stands up. “I understand.” So he’s going to have to do this alone. That’s fine.

He tells Jess his plan before he leaves, because it’s just plain stupid to take off without telling anyone, and she just nods. She’d do the same, were she in this situation. “Take a thermal tracker, if you want. I have one on my dresser.”

“I was planning on stealing that anyway,” Poe says matter-of-factly, and Jess rolls her eyes.

After telling BB-8 to stay behind, which the droid bloops some swear words at, Poe slips away from what he’s supposed to be doing and into the hangar. 

He finds the most inconspicuous two-passenger ship he can, which turns out to be ten years old and an actual piece of junk, but it starts up fine, and the screens say that nothing is falling off, so Poe just sighs and decides it’s his best shot. The ship is going to make it harder to make a hasty retreat, but it’ll get him in without much detection.

The massive hangar door starts to open, and Poe turns his head to see a General Organa in the control room, pointedly looking in the opposite direction of him, a self-satisfied look on her face. She’s mastered the art of evading getting involved in things directly.

Poe flips switches, accidentally presses a big button that is probably there for decoration because it doesn’t do anything, and then he’s off. The ship accelerates a lot faster than he’d expected it to, which is not an unwelcome discovery. 

“Hang in there, buddy,” he says, and shifts into hyperdrive.

 

When Finn wakes up, the burning in his torso is back to full force. He takes another two painkillers, waits for the pain to subside to a non-excruciating level, and very carefully pulls himself upright. The pack’s strap is digging uncomfortably, painfully, into his injured shoulder, but he can't do anything about it, so he just deals. 

He starts walking (hobbling unsteadily, if he's being honest) in no particular direction. He isn't sure exactly why he's going anywhere seeing as it's not going to do him any good--he doesn't remember seeing any advanced settlements during the briefing--but he supposes he feels better doing  _ something _ .

The forest came back to life while he was sleeping, and every noise makes Finn flinch. He expects to hear the sound of boots and orders any second, but every time he gets ready to fight, a small animal runs past--harmless.

He only makes it about fifteen minutes before his legs all but give out under him. He sits against a tree trunk (at least there are plenty of those here) to catch his breath, eat what he estimates to be about a sixth of one of the ration packets, and fiddle uselessly with the transmitter. 

Finn doesn't realize he's fallen asleep until he's being rudely awoken by a blaster in his face, which is becoming an uncomfortably common thing these days. 

“Get up,” the trooper on the other end of the blaster orders.

Easier said than done, but Finn doesn't really want to get shot again. He struggles upright, ignoring the dizziness and spots in his vision to the best of his ability.

“Hands on your head.” She jabs him sharply, which sends a nice stab of pain through all three of his blaster wounds, and reaches for her radio switch.

Finn can't let her tell others that he's here. Survival is going to be hard enough as it is. 

He stumbles weakly forward into her, something he doesn't entirely need to fake, and she catches him easily. But, for a second, her blaster isn't aimed at him.

He pulls his blaster from under his jacket and shoots her. The shot echoes around the forest (and, if he didn't shoot her in time, the radio channel of every stormtrooper in the area) as she falls to the ground. Finn needs to get out of this area fast.

He takes the supply pack from the trooper’s belt and sets off at the fastest jog pace he can manage, which turns out to be a shaky half-jog.

And suddenly Rey is front of him. 

Finn freezes completely. “Rey?” he says, but it comes out as more of a croak. She doesn't reply, just turns and runs. He follows her, but he can't seem to catch up.

Of course, he doesn't get far before he collapses, which is just incredibly painful all around (and, if he had to guess, very loud). Rey has stopped in front of him, and as he reaches out, she disappears. A hallucination? Great. Another problem to add to his alarmingly fast-growing list.

Finn’s small amount of support gives way, and he falls to the ground hard. His head aches; his injuries burn. This probably isn't the best way to be treating himself while he has three fresh blaster wounds. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a lot of choice.

Finn manages to prop himself up on his elbows and pull himself to a thick bunch of bushes. He can hear sounds in the distance that definitely aren't those of small animals--yelling, running boots, the clank of armor (though, if he had been imagining Rey, who knows what else could be a hallucination?). He pulls the camouflage netting from the pack, curls up underneath it, and hopes as hard as he can that the troopers don't find him. 

 

Poe puts the ship down in a relatively open area, close to where the original mission had landed. It’s fortunate that the planet is largely wooded, so that Poe has some materials to hurriedly camouflage the parts that can be seen from outside the clearing.

He checks the small transmitter that he’d gotten the General to “repair” for him--she had instead tuned it to receive signals from Finn’s tracker--and it directs him to the left. 

The walk is long, and more difficult than Poe thought it would be. Fallen trees block some paths, dense foliage blocks others, and the wildlife is loud, loud enough that Poe has to go slower and keep an eye out for stormtroopers he might not hear. 

About twenty minutes into the walk, the transmitter’s light goes out. Poe stops, smacks the side of it, but it just stubbornly sits there. It can’t have run out of energy already. He opens the hatch in the back, pokes around for a second, but before he can make any repairs, the machine beeps and regains the signal again.

Poe proceeds with more caution, hand on his gun, ready for anything to jump out at him. Finn can’t have gotten far, and judging by how the transmitter starts indicating different directions that seem random, the signal could be tampered with.

He’s about to open his mouth and call Finn’s name quietly, but there’s the sound of marching to his right and he dives behind a tree to keep out of sight of the troopers that are passing by.

Once the footsteps recede, he hisses, “Finn!”

There’s not an answer, though he isn’t sure what he expected. The transmitter points Poe to the right, and he shuffles that way, creeping along slowly and searching the underbrush for any sign of Finn. 

He reaches the point when the transmitter points him back the way he came, and then it just loses the signal again. Poe snarls in frustration and turns around to backtrack. He’s searched every bit of the small section of forest, and there’s nothing there. If Finn had just dropped his transmitter, Poe would be chasing a dead end.

After ten more minutes, he’s getting too frustrated to search, so he slumps against a tree and fiddles with the transmitter. It’s not receiving a signal, but it will occasionally flicker with directions that point straight ahead. 

Poe sets it aside, sighs, and then his eyes fall on something. The group of bushes across the path from him has a heap of what looks like leaves at its base, which is strange, because it’s not the season for anyone to be making piles of leaves. 

Poe slowly takes out the thermal tracker he’d borrowed from Jess, points it at the pile of leaves, not really letting himself believe that it could be Finn. Once the screen lights up with a faint heat signature, however, Poe throws himself at it, tearing away the top layer, which turns out to be a sort of net, and finds none other than Finn, looking dead already.

His skin feels clammy to the touch, and Poe can’t help himself from getting a little panicked and tapping Finn’s arm insistently. “Finn, buddy, please wake up.”

Finn’s eyebrows furrow, but his eyes don’t open, like he’s having a bad dream. 

Overall, Finn looks awful. His shirt is cut apart, his shoulder and stomach crusted with an amount of blood that makes Poe nauseous, and the skin surrounding Finn’s shoulder wound seems to be inflamed, red streaks shooting outwards from the edges. Definitely an infection, but Poe can’t take care of that until they’re off the planet. 

Poe rests a hand on Finn’s face in an attempt to ease him from sleep, and prays to every sort of deity out there that Finn’s going to be alright.

He hears footsteps, a big group of them. Poe puts his pack onto his back, yanks the camouflage net over the both of them, and curls around Finn protectively in order to fit. “We’re going to be fine,” he mutters. He isn’t sure if it’s meant to reassure Finn or himself.

 

Something warm is pressing against Finn’s back, stirring him slightly from his disjointed, bloody nightmares. Despite the warmth, he's freezing, and he can't seem to stop shaking. There's a sharp and constant throb that seems to be centered on his right shoulder.

He suddenly smells cinnamon and oil and leather and all the things he associates with Poe, but that's impossible. The Resistance left him behind. Poe can't be here. 

The memory of seeing Rey earlier comes back to him suddenly. She hadn't really been there; Poe probably isn't either. 

Finn drifts off into unconsciousness again (which, he notes vaguely, seems to happening a lot lately), secure in the terrible knowledge that next time he wakes up he will be alone.

 

Poe can feel Finn start to stir, but before he can throw the netting off and check to see if Finn’s eyes are open, Finn settles back down and returns to whatever stage of unconsciousness he had been in before. 

Once it’s clear that the stormtroopers are no longer nearby, Poe pulls off the netting and sits up. He can remember the way to his ship, and it’s programmed into the transmitter anyway, so the main problem is that Poe’s going to have to carry Finn.

Before he starts, however, Poe takes Finn’s transmitter and throws it as hard as he can in the opposite direction of the ship, so no one can follow their location.

Poe puts his pack on, drapes the netting over his back, and then crouches down to determine the best way to do this. Obviously, Finn’s right arm isn’t an option, so Poe gets on Finn’s left side, pulls Finn’s arm over his shoulders, and pushes upwards as hard as he can.

It’s not too difficult to support Finn’s weight, which is good, because Poe’s going to have to do it for two miles.

This is for Finn, though. It’s not for Poe to complain about. Poe is in perfect shape, with no severe injuries, and he’s going to get Finn back alive.

He only has a few seconds to react after he first becomes aware of the footsteps crashing through the forest, smashing sticks underneath their feet. Poe lowers Finn to the ground, tosses the camouflage net over him, and then throws himself behind a tree to hide. 

It takes longer for the coast to become clear again, but Poe would wait forever to get Finn safely home. 

Finn might not  _ have _ forever, though.

After he’s picked Finn up again, Poe ups his pace, jogging lightly while trying not to injure Finn further, becoming bolder in his attempts to get further before having to hide. The stormtroopers have started to congregate around where Finn’s transmitter is, and so the danger lessens the farther away Poe and Finn get.

Finally, he bursts into the clearing where the ship is hidden, and with barely any strength left in his arms, he gets the hatch open and carries Finn inside. There’s a spot designated for first aid care, but Poe can’t lift Finn up high enough to get him onto it, so he just carefully lowers Finn into the copilot’s seat and buckles him in.

Finn’s head lolls to the side in a way that is not at all encouraging, and Poe’s hands are unsteady on the controls as he readies for departure. This is the part where he either makes or breaks his whole mission, and there’s a life on the line that has higher value than his own. “Five more minutes, Finn,” he pleads, forcing himself to look away from Finn and focus on the task at hand when he hears shouting outside the ship. “I can take care of you in just five minutes.”

Finn doesn’t respond. Poe pulls the ship up as fast as he can.

 

Poe rushes the landing, which is a stupid mistake that could have gotten Finn hurt further, but he ignores that for the moment. The priority is Finn. Poe can subject himself to flight simulations for hours on end later.

His hands haven’t stopped shaking, and he can’t get Finn’s safety restraints undone. The clasp slips out of his fingers over and over, and he’s close to just ripping it off when there’s a cool hand over his, a calm voice telling him to stop. 

Poe must have missed the reception committee boarding the ship. He feels himself be gently guided off of the ship, towards the hangar exit. “Wait, he’s hurt, be careful-” he mumbles unnecessarily, trying to push the strong hands off of his shoulders. His mind is far too distant to make it happen.

The proceedings are a blur from there. Poe hears quiet voices, sees them take Finn away from him. Poe’s struck with the thought that Finn might already be  _ dead,  _ that Poe hadn’t been fast enough. He can’t remember the last time on the flight home that he’d checked for a pulse.

“Is he going to be okay?” he asks numbly, and it’s then that his mind catches up with the situation. 

He’s suddenly aware of harsh lighting, the ache of his back and legs, the fact that he’s breathing a little too fast to be normal. Jess is the one guiding him along, presumably to a medic. 

“You with me, Dameron?” Jess asks, apparently aware of how Poe’s just come back to himself. 

“He needs help, he’s sick, he was shot-”

“You’re not looking too hot either.”

“I always look hot.” Poe’s legs buckle beneath him. Jess grabs his arm and keeps him on his feet. 

“Right. Well, it’s naptime for you.”

Poe shakes his head vehemently. “I’m going to make sure he’s okay.” He takes off, ignoring Jess’s exasperated calls after him.

 

Jess finds Poe sitting in front of the room she assumes Finn is in barely an hour later. His head is drooping against the wall. It looks like he's asleep, but he looks up as she approaches.

“I thought the medic said food and rest,” Jess says, crossing her arms.

“Look at me, resting.” Poe stubbornly stifles a yawn.

“ _ Sleep _ ,” Jessika orders, but then a medic comes out, and she knows it's a lost cause.

“Commander Dameron?” the medic says.

Poe scrambles to his feet. “Is he okay?” he asks immediately, his hands nervously running through his hair like they only do when he’s worried about Finn. “He’s okay, right?”

“Your boyfriend is fine,” the medic says in a reassuring, completely serious tone. Jessika can't detect any of the teasing that the pilots usually adopt when they talk to Poe about Finn, which means this medic probably honestly thinks the two of them are together.

At this rate, Poe and Finn may be the last two on the base who figure it out.

“Can I go in?” It’s a true testament to how freaked out Poe is when he doesn’t even bat an eyelash at the medic’s assumption, just pushes his way into the room without waiting for an answer.

Poe almost runs back out of the room and listens to Jess’s advice to get some rest when he sees Finn. Finn’s still out, his wounds bandaged but still nasty-looking, and he’s so still that Poe won’t be able to get the image out of his nightmares for weeks.

He sinks into the chair next to the bed. The two medics still in the room give some sort of instruction or information that Poe forgets to listen to. They don’t ask for him to confirm what he hears before they leave, however, so it must not be important.

It takes several long, agonizing minutes of being perched on the edge of his chair and waiting, but then Finn takes a sharp breath and opens his eyes, and it’s all worth it.

Finn looks around blearily, like he isn't sure what's going on, then asks, “What am I doing here?” 

“You’re in medical, at base, do you remember why?” There’s something strange about Finn’s expression, most likely caused by the pain-reducers that he’s pumped full of. Ignoring this, Poe keeps his smile on his face very professionally--definitely doesn’t let it wobble and betray the fact that he’s been  _ so worried  _ about Finn.

“I got shot three times. But, I…” Finn pauses and looks away. “Never mind. It's not-it's not really important. Who brought me back here?”

“I did. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Finn says quickly (too quickly). “I just...they left, and I was injured, and I-I thought...I don't know?” 

“You thought they left you behind on purpose?” Poe tries not to think about Finn, watching the ships take off and just accepting that they’re not coming back for him. 

“Well, I wasn't strong enough to get back to the ship, and, I mean”--Finn’s voice is getting quieter and quieter as he goes on--“Rey was the only reason the Resistance took care of me after the duel with Ren, so I just…yeah? I did.”

“You got shot three times, you can’t be expected to run to a ship in time, and we took care of you because you were critically injured and you helped us take down an entire Star Destroyer!” Poe’s shifting forward in his seat and grabbing Finn’s hand before he can think about it. “Have you been thinking this the whole time you’ve been here?”

Finn nods slowly, which is just really painful for Poe. “In the Order, if you couldn't walk, you were a waste of resources and I-” He looks like he's about to cry. “They left, what was I supposed to assume?”

Poe squeezes Finn’s hand. He wants to tackle Finn in a hug, but that would probably do more harm than good. “We would never, ever leave you behind on purpose.”

Finn looks unconvinced.

“Listen, I’ll go get Iolo and Karé right now, they’ll tell you.” Poe doesn’t want to leave, but he’s got to make Finn feel better. “I’ll be right back.”

There's a moment of hesitation before Finn lets go of Poe’s hand. “Okay.”

Poe can hardly get up, he’s been sitting for too long and he’s exhausted, but he pushes himself to his feet and down the hall towards Captain Arana’s quarters.

He slides the door open without knocking, and finds Iolo on his bunk reading a book, and Karé sprawled on the ground with numerous diagrams, apparently working on a new formation tactic. Both of them look up at him, and both of them can tell he’s upset, because they don’t question it when he tells them to come with him to see Finn. Maybe they’re both anxious to apologize, too.

Karé takes the lead, always full of unnecessary energy, and Iolo hangs back, not-so-subtly watching Poe to make sure the latter doesn’t collapse.

“He thinks you left him behind on purpose, and he won’t believe me when I say you didn’t,” Poe summarizes right before they enter Finn’s room, and Iolo nods with a grim expression on his face. 

It takes Finn a second to realize they're there. “Captain Arana. Lieutenant Kun. Hi,” he says. His left hand fiddles nervously with the bandages on his stomach.

“Don’t touch those,” Poe chides. Finn ignores him.

Karé pushes Poe back down into the chair he’d previously inhabited, then turns back to Finn. “I’m really glad you’re safe, it was the worst to find out that you’d been left behind.”

Iolo finds his words. “That was careless on my part. No one should get left behind, especially not someone who has anyone waiting for them back on base.”

Poe ducks his head, cheeks burning.

Finn’s eyes dart to Poe and then back to the other two pilots. “Thanks,” he says, and, though a little bit of the uncertainty from earlier is gone, his voice is still quiet and a little shaky. “That means a lot.”

“Once you’re feeling better, you can join us again. Only if you want to, of course, I would understand if you don’t.” Iolo is painfully awkward, the guy can hardly look at Finn, but he’s sincere, at least. Poe has to smile a little.

“Yeah, of course I'll come back.” Finn hasn't stopped pulling at his bandages since Iolo and Karé came in. He looks at his lap. “I have to do my duty, don't I?” 

Karé reaches forward and guides Finn’s hand away from the bandages, more gently than Poe has seen her be in a while. “There are other ways to help the Resistance, kid. If coming out with us isn’t your thing, you can choose to do something else.”

Iolo looks immensely relieved that Karé is there to make his point for him.

“Really, I like coming out with you guys. It's not that,” Finn says. He's still avoiding eye contact. “I mean, now I know it was an accident, but I didn't know that when the ships flew away. I didn't think anyone was going to come back.”

“I’ll always come back for you,” Poe blurts, and he can see out of the corner of his eye that Karé stifles a snort and Iolo facepalms.

“Really?” Finn looks close to shocked. He's probably never had anyone tell him anything like that, if Poe had to guess, which is sad. “But I'm…” Finn doesn't finish the sentence, but Poe can guess that it was going to be something negative.

“You’re amazing, Finn,” Poe says, even though his face feels uncomfortably hot and he would have run out of the room already if he could. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Finn shrugs and immediately winces. “I mean, I'm just an ex-trooper, and you're, well...you're  _ Poe Dameron. _ ” 

Poe hears Karé make a small noise of contempt, and he shoots her a look. She glances back at him, clearly wanting to make a comment about how “Poe Dameron” isn’t all that much, but she keeps her mouth shut.

Iolo has no such filter, which Poe is a little grateful for, because he’s blushing way too much to do much of anything. “Wait, so you broke free from the Order, saved the galaxy, and you still think this scruffy old pilot is above you?” 

Karé high-fives Iolo without even looking at him, a skill they’ve somehow picked up over the years. Poe puts his face back in his hands, torn between being embarrassed and grateful.

Finn shifts uncomfortably. “I don't know?”

Poe’s trying not to think about the emphasis Finn had put on his name, and clears his throat pointedly. “You, uh. You mean a lot to me. I was worried about you.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Karé interjects. “This guy went on a one-man mission for you.”

Poe elbows her, his face somehow getting even warmer. “I would do it again.”

Finn’s face nothing short of lights up. “Really?”

Seeing his smile is like watching a sunrise. Poe cracks a smile of his own and looks down at his boots, then at the wall, then back at Finn. Now or never. “Uh. Yes. Of course! I--uh. I love you.”

“You...I, uh…” Finn trails off, and then somehow (though Poe doesn't know how it's possible) his smile gets wider and even more perfect. “I love you too, Poe.”


End file.
